Political Regimes and Economic Growth in Latin America

Facundo Albornoz () and Jayasri Dutta

Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Birmingham

Abstract: Living in a democratic society has been internationally recognized as a basic human right. While most of the literature tries to identify the effect of democracy on economic prosperity, little work has been done to understand the determinants of economic growth under democracy. This paper examines whether the determinants of economic growth in Latin America are sensitive to political institutions. We find two stark differences between democratic and autocratic growth: (1) democratic government consumption is significantly positive for economic growth. The opposite is true for autocratic government consumption. (2) The impact of human capital is only significant under democracies.

Keywords: Economic Growth; Latin America; Democracy; Autocracy; Government Consumption; human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H50 P16 N46 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dev, nep-hrm, nep-pol and nep-soc
Date: 2007-06
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bir:birmec:07-06

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